


Love Me In December

by Jude81



Category: The Originals (TV)
Genre: December - Freeform, Depression, F/F, Winter, but some warmth and hope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-18 11:56:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16994553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jude81/pseuds/Jude81
Summary: The story is based on a poem I wrote called Love Me In December. It is about depression and hope, but I don't think the story is a "downer." I think is hopeful, but more importantly this story is about how much Freya and Keelin love each other.





	Love Me In December

**Author's Note:**

> For my friend Resa, who never fails to make me smile and laugh.

   ** _Love me in December_**

_Love me in December_

_when my hair turns white_

_and my skin is cold to touch_

_and stars don’t shine at night._

_And I can’t remember_

_Spring. When laughter ran like water_

_and we gazed at puffy clouds_

_you were mine, I was your Queen_

_and even the flowers bowed_

_Love me in December_

_when I dream in white and blue_

_and speak with icicles upon my tongue_

_and soft moments are too few._

_And I can’t remember_

_Summer. We danced_

_and swam the days away_

_we were kissed by the sun_

_And night felt like Day_

_Love me in December_

_when I offer my cold shoulder_

_when I can’t bare my lonely self_

_and the night comes earlier._

_And I can’t remember_

_Fall. When we drank cider from apples_

_that fell from our favorite tree_

_we carved pumpkins under the moon_

_but the sky grew gray for me_

_Love me in December_

_when my brittle bones snap_

_when I ache and reach for you_

_and lay my frosted head in your lap_

_until I can remember._

 

The snow and frozen stalks of pale brown grass and rye crunched underfoot as they walked across the field toward the river. Their cheeks were red, and they moved slowly as if guided by their breath hovering in the air before them. It was almost too cold to snow, the temperature hovering in indecision.

The cold air hurt Freya’s lungs, it had been so long since she had been in the North, despite having been born a millenia ago in the frozen lands of what was now northern Europe. But Keelin had wanted to return to Maine, to the place she had originally called home before she had been a werewolf, in what too often felt like a different lifetime, a stranger’s lifetime.

They said nothing as they came to the edge of the field and the top of a steep bank that led down to a small river. It was no more than fifteen feet across, probably only five feet deep at the most. It was frozen over, and Freya saw the long cracks in the ice like spider webs. Even the cold was too much for the ice, and it buckled under the change in temperature.

She looked around, the air is still and sharp, her lungs were slowly becoming accustomed to it. There was nothing particularly engaging about the river of ice, but this was where Keelin wanted to walk. There was only about two inches of snow on the ground, clumped around scrawny birch and towering pine and spruce trees. The dried brown reeds along the river stood as tiny, lonely sentinels.

But she supposes it is beautiful in its loneliness and austerity. It reminds her vaguely off the Russian tundra, except there are too many trees here, naked and twisted. Everything is white in shimmering shades of blue, intersected with scratchy lines of brown.

She said nothing, simply standing shoulder to shoulder with Keelin, her gloved hand wrapped firmly around Keelin’s. She couldn’t see much of Keelin’s face, the other woman’s white scarf was pulled up almost to her nose, but even from the side, she could see the quietness in Keelin’s eyes. Her eyes had lost their sparkle as fall slowly faded into winter, and the hardest months were still to come.

It was almost Christmas, but Keelin hadn’t wanted to do much decorating other than buying a few poinsettias and placing them around the small loft they shared. Freya had stopped decorating for Christmas centuries ago, not really enjoying the gaudy and garish displays of the blow-up santa balloons, nor the giant plastic statues of Mary and Joseph. The last time she’d bothered to really decorate was Victorian England. She shuffled her feet and leaned in slightly closer to Keelin. Perhaps that had been a mistake, not decorating for Christmas.

“Maybe we should decorate. Get a tree. We could cut one down, decorate the little lodge?” It was a hunting lodge that had belonged to Keelin’s grandfather. It had the basic necessities and large, heavy wooden furniture that was scarred with time and use. Colorful afghans graced the top of the couch and armchairs, courtesy of Keelin’s grandmother. It was rustic. Old. Charming.

Keelin said nothing, having barely heard Freya. She stared out at the frozen river remembering the last time she’d skated there with her brother, before everything had changed, before the wolf, before…this…this thing that ate away at her. This river had been her backyard, her playground, her school, her home. It felt cold now, untouchable. She blinked back the salt stinging her eyes, blaming it on the light breeze that had suddenly kicked up through the trees.

“They look like the straw hair of a sleeping frost giant,” Keelin murmured watching as the dried reeds shivered and rattled in the light wind.

“What?” Freya turned her body slightly into Keelin’s slipping her arm around her waist.

“The reeds,” muttered Freelin as she shrugged and dug her mittened hands into her padded, down jacket. She dipped her head and pressed her nose into her scarf, blowing air into it to create a pocket of warmth for her cold face.

“Do you think there is a frost giant sleeping under the snow? Or maybe a god, and his hair is poking up?”

Freya turned and looked at the reeds, not really seeing what Keelin seemed to clearly see. She nodded carefully and smiled, “There once were frost giants. I never saw them, but my mother told me about them. Perhaps it is Maine’s very own frost giant.”

Keelin said nothing for a moment, finally breaking the silence. “It’s empty.” She said it so perfunctory, her voice an even monotone, as if it were a foregone conclusion, that she had always expected the emptiness, and now she was validated.

Freya felt something wrap around her chest and squeeze, and she choked slightly, suddenly unable to breathe for the cold tendrils slipping through her ribcage, curling and squeezing. “I-Keelin, baby…”

She was helpless in the face of Keelin’s flat utterance, and she didn’t know what to say or do. She had hoped that returning to Maine would provide some sort of relief to Keelin, but it was as if she were still simply going through the motions, obeying whatever inner puppet master was pulling at her strings.

Freya looked up, shivering at the dull slate of the sky looming over them. She should have known this was wrong. Everything here was white and blue, gray. Cold and stark, the same as Keelin’s dreams when she whispered them to Freya in the early morning when they both should have been sleeping, but Keelin was too restless, anxiety plucking at every nerve, her legs jerking, her arms wrapped tight around a pillow.

Freya felt the first wet kiss, before she saw it, and in a moment the sky was filled with burned out white stars. She turned to Freya, smiling a little at the picture of Freya’s dark hair speckled with white diamonds that slowly melted, but some too stubborn to give in to the heat of Keelin’s body.

White and blue. Freya knew it could be beautiful. The pure, soft white of Keelin’s scarf, the diamond blue of the necklace around her neck that Freya had given to on a hot New Orlean’s summer night, when nothing was between them but the mingled sweat of their tangled bodies.

But now…everything was between them, a gaping wound, a wound that Freya couldn’t see, that she couldn’t heal. It was Keelin’s wound alone, and Keelin hadn’t yet found the words to describe how she really felt.

Keelin hunched her shoulders, head bent staring at her black boots, the white snow scattered across the top, tiny diamonds in an ink sky. A black sky, a pit, an abyss. She grit her teeth, and pulled her swirling thoughts from the riptide that would only drag her down. But she could feel it, the lingering whispers of doubt, the anxiety rooting through her mind. And despite the heat of Freya’s body, she felt cold. So very cold, and she didn’t know how to explain it, to make Freya understand, to make herself understand what was happening.

The doctor said it was Depression. As if that one word could explain the depth of loneliness Keelin felt, even when in Freya’s arms, as if it could describe the scale of the fatigue that dogged her every step despite sometimes sleeping fourteen hours a day on the weekend. As if it could describe the fear she saw in Freya’s eyes, or how Freya’s touch made her feel unworthy. As if it could describe the slow sinking.

But Freya’s arms were her haven, her sure place, and it wasn’t Freya’s fault that the Empty yawned open in Keelin’s chest this time of year.

She was a werewolf, the only one to have Depression to her knowledge. It had made her unsure of her place in her pack, and she had hid her pain, retreating into herself, pretending she didn’t hear the same questions and scoffs.

_But you seem so happy, you have everything, no one in this pack is like this. Just get up. Stop feeling sad. Just get better._

She shook her head, pushing the dark voices from yesterday out of reach. She was healthy, in love with Freya, had a job she loved, friends; and yet none of that could undo December.  

And she hated it. Oh how she fucking hated it. She didn’t realize tears were dripping down her cheeks until she felt Freya’s warm fingers on her face, felt the warmth of her breath buffeting her ear.

“Oh my Love, my Love.” Freya wiped the tears from Keelin’s cold cheeks, pressing her mouth lightly to her ear. “I can not fix this for you. But I am here. I am always here.”

Keelin turned her face to Freya’s, tears dripping faster. She wrapped her arms around Freya and simply held on. She wished she could be Freya’s laughing Spring Girl, and her dancing Summer Girl, even be her Fall Girl, but this…this was December, when she was flat and dull from a mind too raw.

“I’m sorry,” she gasped, her throat tightening as her veins froze into a million tiny rivers. “I shouldn’t be like this! I shouldn’t!” She clutched at the back of Freya’s coat, her face buried in the warmth of Freya’s neck. “I have everything to make me happy…and I…I…I love you. I do! I’m sorry I can’t…I just…” she choked, tears ripping through her, her nose clogging, as she tried to breathe through her mouth. She shivered and quaked, her body stiffening as frost slid along her bones, creating starbursts in it’s wake.

“I’m here, my Love, my beautiful December Girl. I am here, and I will be always be here,” Freya held her Keelin tightly, her own tears mingling with Keelin’s as she pressed kisses to her cold cheeks.

It kept snowing, blanketing them, turning Keelin’s hair white.

“I love you in Spring. I love you in Summer. I love you in Fall. And I love you in winter, my December Girl. I always will, even when the sun doesn’t shine, and everything around us is empty,” she pressed her cheek to Keelin’s, “I will always love you in December.”

Keelin’s bones ached, she felt brittle and hollowed out. She pressed her head to Freya’s chest, the steady thump lulling her as Freya held her and rocked her slightly. The frost retreated slightly, hissing along Keelin’s bones.

The Empty stared down at the two figures holding each other in the falling snow. Empty is never Empty when someone is there, and when there are two…Empty is something less.

**Author's Note:**

> Thoughts?


End file.
